Jake Gyllenhaal has opened up about being legally blind as an actor in Hollywood, saying he thinks it has been “advantageous”.
The Donnie Darko and Nightcrawler star was born with a lazy eye that naturally resolved and he has been wearing intensive corrective lenses since the age of six. He remains legally blind.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Gyllenhaal said: “I like to think it’s advantageous. I’ve never known anything else. When I can’t see in the morning, before I put on my glasses, it’s a place where I can be with myself.”
The actor has spoken before about how his vision has affected his career. While he was filming a scene in 2015 boxing film Southpaw in which his character is told his wife had died, he said he removed his contacts, believing it would force him to listen more acutely and access the necessary emotions.
Gyllenhaal recently starred in the remake of 1980s cult classic Road House, which became Amazon Prime Video’s biggest-ever movie debut, with over 50 million people watching it in its first two weeks of streaming.
He plays bouncer and ex-UFC fighter Elwood Dalton, in a part first made famous by Patrick Swayze, and stars alongside Conor McGregor and Billy Magnussen.
Gyllenhaal undertook a very strict dietary regimen while preparing for the film, which meant that even while filming an eating scene, he couldn’t eat a potato crisp.
“If you really look. I don’t eat tacos,” he explained. “You see me take the plate and I say thank you and then the scene cuts you never actually see me take a mouthful. I was on a strict regimen, one chip would have done the whole thing,”
Gyllenhaal also revealed that he contracted an infection after cutting his hand on the set of the film.
“We’re fighting on the floor, we’re fighting around tables. We’re fighting around glass, even if it’s breakaway glass. I put my hand on the bar, fucking straight glass,” he said during an appearance on the Armchair Expert With Dax podcast.
“I felt the glass go into my hand,” he added, before explaining how his “whole arm swelled up” leading to a staph infection.
Gyllenhaal is also set to play the lead role on Apple TV+’s new legal thriller miniseries Presumed Innocent, which hits streaming on June 12. Also starring Ruth Negga (Loving, Preacher) and Bill Camp (The Queen’s Gambit, The Night Of), it tells the story of a prosecutor who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of one of his colleagues.